2 weeks

So after taking nearly a year off from posting anything to my blog. It is time to jump back in. We've had a crazy year with many changes taking place. The title is homage to our time left in Ohio. Kris has taken a new job in Wisconsin and has been living there since January. Since we like him a whole lot we would like to live in the same state (really the same house), we are leaving our lovely home and friends for the Milwaukee area.

We are becoming cheese heads. Specifically we are moving to Brookfield, birthplace of Caroline Ingalls. If you read my last post, all the way from last summer I posted to books we listened to on our cross country trips. One of my comments was about the listening to the Little House series and hoping to someday visit some of the sites from the Ingalls family. Apparently I need to watch out what I wish for.

Road Trip

Every year we take a road trip around the country. One of the things most people find surprising is, we don't take along a DVD player. So one of the things we do is listen to Audio books. Over the years we have listened to many books. Since we spend so much time in the car I usually find a whole series to listen to over the course of the trip.

So I had a friend ask me some suggestions for our favorites. So I decided to go back and make a list of books we've listened to over the years. This is most of them, there are few that have escaped me.

Harry Potter - we listened to all 7 books, we bought the last several books in the middle of our trip on their release day, a bit scary for younger ages, my kids have all listened to them and loved them.

Little House on the Prairie - Entire series, a family favorite, I would like to visit some of the places the Ingalls lived. We driven close to some of the places out in the middle of no where, South Dakota.

Gregor. Underland series - If you are a fan of Hunger Games, same author, written for a younger audience, we really enjoyed all 5 books. There is some violence, less violent than Harry Potter, but there are several battles that take place.

Unfinished Angel - My kids loved the funny sound effects from this story.

Calder Games, Chasing Vermeer, Wright 3 by Blue Balliett - Enjoyed this series and enjoyed learning a little culture along the way. We listened to the Wright 3 while visiting Chicago and the Frank Lloyd Wright House that the story centers around.

When You Reach Me - I really enjoyed this book, the book appealed to my older kids, along the lines of 10 and older. The content is appropriate for all ages, but the story may be harder to follow for younger kids. The story centers around a 12 year old girl, who starts getting these strange notes claiming to want to save her life.

Melendy Quartet - Loved this sweet series, The Saturday, Four Story Mistake, Then there Were Five, there is a fourth one, Spiderweb for Two we haven't listened to yet.

BFG - If you are familiar with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, this is another fun story by Roald Dahl.

Bud, Not Buddy - Set in the depression era, about an African-American 10 year old orphan. I tend to pick put a lot of Newbury Award winners and this is one I really enjoyed.

Hattie Big Sky - Orphaned, 16 year old Hattie inherits a homestead in Montana and the adventures and trials of trying to fulfill the requirements to keep the homestead.

Beverly Cleary - Love all of her books.

The Penderwicks - the adventures of 4 sisters, perfect for our family. I think the adventurous girls would appeal to both boys and girls.

Water Street - set during the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, loved learning some of the history, apparently this is a continuation of the story and there are 2 books previous to this one. I am going to have to look for the others.

I am trying to figure out what to listen to this summer, I have Anne of Green Gables series and one possibility, but I think we may have listened to parts of it. We definitely have watched the series many times. Anyone have any suggestions?

School's Out for Summer

School is officially out. After weeks of extended hours and 1 (for Mia & Ava) and 2 (Karin & Kirsten) days tacked on to the end of the year. We are done. Our district had 9 snow days this year, so their were a lot of days made up. Karin & Kristen had to make up an extra day due to no heat one day.

I have mixed feelings about having this school year over. I am so thankful not to have 4 different start times, but this is the last year that I will have a child home during the day. Mia will be in school all day next year and I will have to figure out what to do with myself when I grow up.

We have out together our plans for the summer. I always start out the summer with great intentions to follow through with our wonderful plans, but it is hard to hold any structure together when we travel. So we have made plans to try to stay sane and have a fun and enjoyable summer. So some of the sanity savers we are attempting; Lunch - each of my kids will be responsible for planning lunch one day a week. I will help the younger kids, they will get one on one cooking time with me. Laundry - again each kid will be responsible for the laundry. Karin & Kirsten will collect, sort, run the wash & fold. Ava & Mia will collect, sort & fold with some assistance. They will also take a day to clean one of the bathrooms. My main hope is that we will be able to teach our kids some basic life skills by the time they go off to college

We have set up a loose schedule on what we will do each day of the week. Monday, library day, Tuesday movie/bowling, Wednesday play group at the park, Thursday field trip day, Friday pool day. We will be flexible in the days, I love to spontaneous if anything crops up so we will not be too stringent if some other opportunity presents itself.

We brainstorm at the beginning of summer of all the things we want to see and do this summer. We divide the items up into big, medium and small activities. We usually try to do 1 or 2 small activities each week, medium activities 1 or 2 a month, big 1 or 2 during the summer. Some of the activities are going to Milk & Honey, or the zoo to going to Cedar Point.

I love summer and the freedom it gives us to sleep in and do nothing, but I know that it drives me crazy and I feel like a failure if we get to the end of the summer and we haven't made any progress in our lives. I am looking forward to wonderful summer, with lots of fun, excitement and growth and lots more of this...

Happy Mother's Day

I have gone back and scanned some of my family's old slides. I love this one of my mother and two older sisters in the mid-sixties.

They are on the Ellis Island Ferry and all in matching pink dresses, that I am sure that my mom made. I think my mom looks so chic in those cool sunglasses. Hope you had a Happy Mother's Day.

I just noticed the couple kissing in the background.

Hawaii

Kris had meetings in Hawaii in March and of course I decided that I needed to go along. We had wonderful time once we got there. We missed a connection in Chicago and ended up in Los Angeles for the night. I was pretty bummed and was disappointed that we wouldn't get to see everything we had hoped. Turns out it, we were fortunate, we were in LA for tsunami that hit Japan and then hit Hawaii. There was little damage to Waikiki where we stayed, but we got to miss the scare and evacuation.

We had a wonderful time and squeezed everything in that we wanted to see. Some of the highlights:

1. Loved the clouds over the mountains 2. La'ie Point, just beautiful 3. Laie Temple, it was recently remodeled and it was wonderful to go to the temple, I especially loved to see the diversity of the people there. There were people from all of the world. 4. Polynesian Cultural Center, we had a fun group, but we were the youngest couple by far, the rest of the couples were empty-nesters. 5. Luau, we couldn't go to Hawaii without going to a luau. The real highlight was the night show, where we couldn't take any pictures. 6. Valley of the Temples - the temple is a replica of Buddhist Temple in Japan. 7. Diamond Head from a sunset catamaran cruise, we even got to see some whales. 8. Kris at the top of Diamond Head. 9. Pearl Harbor - we planned on going the morning we didn't get to Hawaii (due to our missed flight). Turned out we wouldn't have been able to go even if we had made our original flight. All harbors in Hawaii were closed due to the tsunami.

This was our first trip to Hawaii, definitely didn't have a enough time to see even touch the surface. My favorite thing we did was snorkel in Hanauma Bay, we only had a couple hours.

There were all kinds of tropical fish just swimming around the reef. I would have loved to spend hours there. I totally "borrowed" the photo above from a friend Amanda. The guide books had me paranoid about break-ins, so I left my camera back at the hotel.

We had a wonderful time in Hawaii and it was hard to go back to reality and cold weather, which we are still experiencing 2 months later. I want summer or a tropical beach.

New Look

I really am going to start updating this blog. Starting with March, so look back for some our family happenings. How do you like the new look?

She did it again

I am amazed by Karin. She is extremely shy. She is anxious if I ask her to talk to or call someone. I can completely empathize with her, because that was me as a kid. I still have to talk myself into talking to or calling people at times. So, it blows me away that she can present her science fair project and stay composed and really impress the judges with her communication skills.

So, Karin again did fabulous on her science fair project, ready for the title, "Measurement & Analysis of Drag to Lift Ratio on Wings." What that means is that she recreated the apparatus that the Wright Brothers built to test out wings. Karin received a Superior Rating and the best overall Middle School project. I am very proud of you Karin.